


Twilight Woods

by Meriah



Category: Original Work
Genre: Autobiography, Disability, Dyscalculia, Gen, Learning disability, Math, Mathematics, Memoir, School, Self-Insert, fourth grade, learning disorder, self - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 18:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1195158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meriah/pseuds/Meriah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A recount of my fourth grade self in the classroom, struggling to understand mathematical concepts due to having the developmental disorder known as dyscalculia. Told in first-person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twilight Woods

**Author's Note:**

> The following describes challenges with dyscalculia, a developmental disorder that affects comprehending arithmetic, grasping abstract concepts such as time and space, understanding directions, among other things. Not all dyscalculics have the same problems, nor do all dyscalculics have the same level of impairment. However, it is important to note that many dyscalculics do not tend to show significant difficulties until middle childhood as they are presented with more complicated mathematics. Able to “sail by” in previous grades, such children may no longer be able to mask their disability. For this reason, the story below is set in the fourth grade – the same grade in which I received my diagnosis, although I had always presented symptoms.
> 
> Dyscalculia is a lifelong disorder – it does not fade with age. With specialized tutoring and other services, some dyscalculics can “overcome” their impairment. Meanwhile, others may still have difficulty long into adulthood.
> 
> For more information about dyscalculia, check out this Youtube video presented by Dr. Horowitz of the National Center for Learning Disabilities: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVf_OHK2hHQ#t=325
> 
> I may write more about dyscalculia in the future.
> 
> By the way, I apologize in advance for the large spaces between paragraphs. This is due to the uploading system misreading the format. I tried to fix it, but my attempts were obviously unsuccessful.

**Twilight Woods**

 

Sunbeams poured in through the windows to cast heaven-like colors on the desks of the classroom. It was February in the suburban New England town, and at that point the winter no longer united the fourth grade children with smiles. Rather, they stirred in their seats.

 

I sat in the corner, my view of the lesson impaired by the brightness of the sunlight. With a hand cupped over my eyes, I could detect the long streams of arithmetic being written by my teacher on the chalkboard. Nearby, a redhead coiled fingers in her hair. One boy entertained himself with scribbles of “Nicktoon” characters on notebook paper while he chewed on his lower lip. Another boy piped in comments at the speed of light. However, despite these issues, they absorbed the material while serving as lively participants. In particular this applied to the Asian girl, Angela. She held the identity of one of the smart children, and others turned to her for knowledge. I studied her as she copied down everything being taught, her back arched upward and the pencil firm in her left hand.

 

Mrs. Whittaker continued to jot down her lesson in white equations across the chalkboard with one hand pressed into her bony hip. The students watched. Then the thin woman turned around, her chalk poised high in the air like a conductor with an orchestral baton. “Quick! Who can answer the question?”

 

My body was stiff and quiet, while my classmates raised their hands with the gesture _pick-me-pick-me!_ Yet I felt the opposite. Teeth dug into the soft flesh of my mouth as I sunk low in the chair. In that moment, I wanted to be like the chemical compounds of my seat – a mass of disregarded atoms that blended in with the scenery.

 

Angela was called upon. With her hand flicking a wisp of hair from her shoulders she responded in a smooth tone,  “The answer is 30.03.”

 

“That's right! Excellent,” Mrs. Whittaker chirped. She then wrote out more questions. Her hand moved the chalk effortlessly across the black surface, leaving trails of dust behind a myriad of numerical symbols: the “x” of a multiplication sign, the couple of dots and line of a division symbol, the two parallel lines to represent equals. With these were numbers in a set order, together was the language of arithmetic – a language as foreign to me as Arabic or Sanskrit; just a series of arcane characters.

 

Someone within me begs, _Oh please, please don't call on me..._

 

Then the voices of those around me became distant and words mixed with the creaking of the old building. My muscles tensed as if imprisoned to a realm of low volume. It had begun – the phenomenon that haunted me every day during mathematics. I cringed at the heaviness in my abdomen, and nausea oozed through my intestines. All over my body itched; my nails scratched away until the skin was red. _Calm down. You're freaking out,_ my inner voice reasons. But the ailment only intensified with every breath that escaped my lungs. My throat was coated with the taste of acid, and I could sense my heart shuddering against my ribs.

 

There was a caustic knot in my gut. I sensed it evolve into something larger as it twisted and turned. I sucked in my stomach, as if devouring myself from the insides. Then I wondered if my classmates noticed me, but their expressions were unreadable in that state. My thoughts were too distracted by the impending panic, and they operated on hyper-mode without time to process.

 

A torrent of heat swallowed me whole. And then unexpectedly, my muscles relaxed. The nausea slowed into a constant ebb and flow as sounds returned to normal. That was the chance for my body to recover, but the anxiety would return... it always returned.

 

Around me I saw a field of arms raised upward, eager to answer all of the questions that Mrs. Whittaker chimed. The students understood and knew the mathematical concepts. They had solved the mysteries that remained perplexing to me. I quivered, unsure as to what to do with my arms fastened to my sides.

 

The voice within me sneered, _You don't belong here with everyone else._

 

A conflicting thought weeps, _No, that's not true! Let me prove myself!_

 

It is then that the limits of my senses amplified. Hearing sharpened as my vision turned acute. I imagined running my fingers over the numbers on the board as if they were tangible like stone, feeling their smoothness, crevices, imperfections. Yet instead, the numbers remained inscrutable.

 

I knew Mrs. Whittaker was about to call on anyone for the final answer, that I could be selected. Like a period crystallized in space-time, I awaited my sentencing in the aura of quiet. Her dress fluttered around the knees as she wrote out the equation. After, the children battled against one another again. Their bodies raised upward in their seats with arms directed at the ceiling. Some cried, “Pick me! Pick me! I know what it is.” Yet I was terrified. My neck slumped downward with long strands of hair to conceal my face.

 

The ugly eggshell white tiles on the floor reflected in my eyes as I prayed, _Whatever you do, don't pick me. Please._ I could sense Mrs. Whittaker's attention on me as she tapped the floor, her deep-set eyes sympathetic with the knowledge that the material was beyond my comprehension. There was the perpetual reminder that I failed to know what I should, the guilt she must have experienced as a teacher. But then...

 

“Joey,” she calls. “What do you think the answer is?”

 

My diaphragm loosened with a sigh. Relaxed against my seat with the steady bobbing of feet, I finally allowed in a gulp of oxygen. I was safe. Joey beamed with confidence as he gave the right answer.

 

“You’re correct. Great work!”

  
For a fleeting moment, I believed that Mrs. Whittaker had concluded the mathematics lesson for the day. Instead, she retrieved a pile of photocopies from the absent desk beside her, and she moved through the aisles to pass a sheet to each child. “This is a pop quiz. You have five minutes to answer the questions on your sheet. Turn your sheet over when you’re done.”

 

As if they were robots driven by the same gears, I watched my peers take out their foldable desk dividers. They assembled them with ease by bending the cardboard sections into the ridges for support. The dividers, each with three towering sides, were meant to prevent cheating. I watched as the classroom transformed into an office with all students hidden behind miniature cubicles. Then I tried to construct my divider, but the end product was a toppled-over rhombus.

 

Casey, the girl beside me, noticed my disaster. Without asking, she fixed the errors before setting the divider on my desk. My face was bright scarlet as I thank her.

 

“No problem. Anytime,” she replied with a smile. Yet before her divider obscures her, I can hear her whisper “retard” through glossed lips.

 

Mrs. Whittaker announced the five-minute countdown had begun. I could sense pencils dancing across paper as the students figured out the problems, decoding the relationships between the numbers and symbols.

 

I was stumped by the fraction and word problems. They were passed over in favor of ones that were easier to answer. Yet all the while, I trembled with the thought I failed to know what I should. Meanwhile, I heard the first sheet flip over as Angela defeated everyone once again with a timed quiz. Casey finished soon after. The room was silent as the other students continued along with their work.

 

I knew the fourth grade students glanced up at the clock and then back at their papers. From a wall set in the distance, the clock governed how much time remained with its numbers and shifting hands. Someone murmured, “only two minutes left...”.

 

Then everything faded around me as my gaze intensified on the clock. Like an amorphous ghoul, it only offered mysteries to me. I recalled that the hands provided the information for the answer I sought, but their direction was meaningless to me. What was the hour if the long hand rested between the “11” and “12”? Why was a minute constituted as sixty seconds? When did the past melt into the present?

 

Time: an illusion to measure the transpiration of events or perhaps something corporeal in a dimension that felt separate from my own. The familiar pangs of nausea churned within me again as I pondered how many seconds remain. Down upon my paper, an obelus separated “160” and “2”. It divided them like my attention between time and the quiz. Both entities only escalated my confusion.

 

I groaned. Mathematics was a constant shadow that followed me.

 

My hearing sharpened to listen in on sheets that flipped over and pencils that fell on desks. Time was running out! I felt as if there was a rubber band around my ribcage, constricting, snapping, and retracting.

 

“160 ÷ 2”. I remembered that the sign meant to divide. However, beyond that there was perpetual fog that expanded through my brain. It was as if I was lost and saw familiar but unrecognizable figures in such weather. I organized up the problem; it was useless. The fog thickened. My inner self walked through those twilight woods, alone and afraid.

 

_Hurry up!_

 

I wanted to finish the quiz. Yet paradoxically, my intestines twisted more as I knew that I would once again be the only student with an incomplete assignment.

 

The final group of sheets flipped over. Before I could process this information, Mrs. Whittaker rose from her chair. She snapped her fingers and declared, “Time's up!”

 

In that final moment, I realized that seven questions out of perhaps thirty were answered on my sheet. There were rows of empty spaces where pencil marks should have been. I only heaved a sigh of defeat. Then within me, the twilight woods metamorphosed with the dissipation of fog. I bolted through the vines and thickets, desperate to find the exit. But it was too late – darkness had fallen.

 

And in reality, even the sunbeams no longer entered the classroom. Outside had turned to gray.


End file.
